1. Field of the Invention
The Invention relates to the field of aero/astronautics, specifically to the design and use of small spaceplanes from 50,000 up to 300,000 lbs. Gross Takeoff Weight, hereinafter referred to as GTW.
2. Brief Description of the Related Art
Until the present, access to suborbital and orbital flight has been limited to vertically launched or ascendant, generally unaerodynamically assisted rockets experiencing structural consumption or requiring extensive refit to repeat, lofting payloads at a $10,000/lb. cost. By employing low cost, routine runway takeoffs and powered landings, the efficiencies of hydrogen propulsion or simply of reusable-throttleable supersonic combustion ramjets, aerodynamic lift, reusable reentry ablatives and a titanium aluminide airframe ready for further flight upon return, even small spaceplanes can drop the cost per pound to suborbit and orbit an order of magnitude to under $1000 a pound. Further, this flight efficiency makes it possible to increase the military utility of spaceflight by dropping the cost and greatly increasing the flight reliability and probability of military payload flight placement and replacement, as well as opening suborbit and orbit to routine military (air) superiority flight and patrol.
Since the time efficient weapons were mounted in aircraft, the design of the pursuit/fighter type has been a search for the highest performance obtainable coupled with a predictable reliability. Despite the flight and program cancellations of the X-15B, the X-20 and the X-30 FIG. 1, with what these programs found and Space Shuttle flight the thread of design progress is able to continue to this day and now stands where a fighter type can be usefully derived from the X-30 titanium aluminide airframe winged lifting body, with air-compressing intake fore and half-cone exhaust aft, featuring mid-mounted supersonic combustion ramjets that burn JP-8 or better now and hydrogen and 50% solids slush hydrogen, in time. Because aerospace planes are large due to propulsion requirements, the fighter type necessarily goes from less than the fighter's current large 65,000 lbs. GTW to the start of the X-30's 300,000–1,000,000+GTW range. The X-30 design covered 1,000,000 to 300,000 lbs in the course of demonstrating cost effective cargo transport. Fighters have been found most effective as the smaller of the ascending classes of aircraft over time. In this weight range cargo carriage is possible and commercial flight thrives best using flight technologies formed by military usage, but unit costs go up as size decreases and the most cost effective carriage over suborbital long range or into orbit will always be found in the X-30's 300,000 to over 1,000,000 lb. GTW range.